Annual Archives for Organic Garden Index

A few years ago, a student group presented Dining Services with their class research on the carbon footprint of our annual student Thanksgiving dinner. We normally make our pies from scratch but one of their recommendations for improvement was that we make the pumpkin pies using no canned pumpkin. For a pie or two, that's fine, but it's a considerable challenge when baking for 1,700 hungry college students! Nevertheless, the gauntlet was thrown and we were determined to meet the challenge.

Today our head baker, Joanne Adams, started the process of making her pumpkin pies from scratch, using pumpkins from the Bowdoin Organic Garden! Katherine Creswell, our organic garden manager, delivered 250 pounds of pumpkins that Joanne washed, seeded, cut and roasted. She'll then scoop, mash and freeze the pumpkin puree to use in pies for our Food Day dinner on October 20.

Never one to be wasteful, Joanne is also roasting all the pumpkin seeds and plans to make batches with different seasonings like cumin or sea salt. Stay tuned as we document the whole process!

"The gauntlet was thrown and we were determined to meet the challenge."